Biographies

Robert Warne Wilson

Name:
Robert Warne Wilson

Born:
November 3, 1926

Joined AGB:
1962

Primary Dept/Div:
Research/Individual Clients

Primary Office:
New York

Robert (Bob) Wilson was born in Detroit in 1926. He received an undergraduate degree from Amherst College and a masters degree from the University of Michigan. He joined Becker in 1962 having been hired by Larry Kahn as a securities analyst. During a short period, Bob was attracting personnal and family investors and was moved over to retail accounts and authorized to have discretionary accounts. Bob flourished as a discretionary account manager, running hedged portfolios. He left Becker to manage his own account and to form a hedge fund, which per his obituary, became very successful and Bob very wealthy.

Obituary:
New York Times, Dec. 27, 2013. Robert W. Wilson, Frugal Philanthropist, Dies at 87. Robert W. Wilson, a retired hedge-fund founder who became a major philanthropist, donating about $600 million to causes that included environmental conservation, the American Civil Liberties Union and Roman Catholic education (though he was an openly gay atheist), died on Monday in Manhattan. He was 87. Mr. Wilson was found dead Monday in an inner courtyard of the San Remo building on Central Park West, between 74th and 75th Streets, where he lived in a 16th-floor apartment. The police said he left a note indicating that he had leapt to his death. Mr. Wilson had suffered a stroke in June. Mr. Wilson earned a fortune in the stock market as the founding partner of a hedge fund firm, Wilson & Associates, that specialized in short-selling, the strategy whereby traders sell borrowed shares of a stock, betting that it will decline in value before it has to be bought at its most recent closing price. He founded the firm in 1969, retired in 1986, and soon after began giving away most of his wealth, which peaked at around $800 million in 2000.